Consciousness Continued: A fresh start

May I ask is a persons 'personality' part of their soul/conciousness?

Ok I will partly wear you re-wording of my question, but only because Character and Personality are pretty much synonymous.
But I did not mean to ask “soul OR consciousness”. I said soul/consciousness. To ask “soul OR consciousness” is meaningless as even in your reply you make clear that they are the same thing, or at least components of the same thing.So ”Character’. Let’s take your concept of ”core’ character and look at that. What of you does that core character actually encompass? Does it hold your memories? Whether you are a nice/nasty person? prone to truth or lies?

Ok the difference between ”me’ and ”my leg’. However, at this point we are arguing semantics. I was using soul/conscious as a catchall. Interesting. When an insane person deliberates and chooses to go on a killing spree it’s an aberration of the brain but when a mentally ”healthy’ person deliberates and chooses to go on a killing spree its because of his/her soul? Yes indeedy. {my Bold}Not wanting to be rude but you made that up didn’t you? Did you think I was going to ask ”how do we know who we are in heaven without our memories?’ and then think ”Ok, God gives us back our memories once we get there.’ since, as you state, to claim that memory travels to the afterlife in the souls would contradict your own points.To me your concept of a soul, speaks nothing to me of a persons individuality but more of a morality checksum that is temporarily loaned to an individual for their span. For that matter ”Soul’ seems to be very much a ”learned behavior’ rather than an entity in its own right.

No it doesnt, because to demolish the scientific view you would have to be able to demonstate how this non-physiacal construct of a 'soul' directly affects the physicality of the human brain.By that I mean construct an experiment where we can observe the soul directly affecting the brain. You would have to make predictions and have the borne out by your experiments. Then you would have to have your papers pass peer-review. All of this to even have a chance of demolishing the scientific model.The simple unprooven assertion of the existance of a soul means nothing.. you have to 'prove' the existance of a soul for your argument to hold any kind of water.

Conversely why are you afraid to accept the possibility that what you are, ( i.e. the thinking feeling deciding bit of you) is simply an emergent property of the billions of synaptic connections in that lump of grey matter called your brain? Why invent this intangible phantom element to make up for your incredulity at the idea that your brain is the entirety of what is doing the thinking.If this concept of the soul was correct then you should be able to remove all higher brain functions from the human brain and just leave the motor controls. If you view on the soul is correct then this should have no affect on that persons cognitive abilities. After all it is the soul that does the thinking right? Does the feeling, deciding, loving, hurting: surely you don’t need all that extra brain baggage?So fancy giving it a go?OK that aside. If I were to offer you one of two diamonds on my out stretched palms.On one hand you see a large and shiny and well.. daimondy, diamond. Street value I say is huge (many, many thousands).The one on the other hand I tell you is vastly more valuable but it is invisible you can’t see any trace of it, you can’t feel it hefty mass, your hand passes through it then you try and examine it. You say I’m lying that there isn’t a diamond there. I assure you there is because I KNOW there is.Why don’t you take my word for it? The invisible diamond is the best thing you could ever choose, but why do you not believe my assertions? I know the diamond, it is real and it could be yours. All you have to do is believe me when I tell you it is real.Now which diamond do you want?Edited by ohnhai, : edited for readability

Hi there Mr_matrix. Just a quick note to point out when replying to a particular post you are supposed to use the 'reply' button, not the 'gen reply' button.Using the 'Reply' Button reocrds the history of the thread ( who replired to whom, ect) It makes tracking sub threads so much easier.

So ”God of the Gaps’? Nice. JBut no. Any piece of matter at the subatomic level would seem like a disparate, swirling cloud of sub atomic particles. This holds true for a rock as much as the human synapse. It’s the same problem of not being able to see the wood for the trees.And even if you could make the claim that the lager structure was emergent then all it could be emergent from is the bonds and positions of the subatomic particles. But it isn’t truly ”emergent’ as you can infer the macro structure by the bonds and positions of those subatomic particles.I.e., we know this cloud of sub atomic particles are an atom of this , we know that cloud over there is an atom of that. As we look round we identify more atoms. We start to notice their arrangement to one another and we start to recognise those shapes as molecules. We notice these molecules clump together in things we recognise as proteins. Those proteins clump together and form many things including human cells. These cells lump together to form structure. And as we continue to pull out two vast walls of cells loom on either side as chemical messengers hustle from one side to the other. This gap is a human synapse and is the root of the emergent behaviour we call consciousness.The synapse it self isn’t emergent because it is structure, and can be directly inferred from it’s component parts. Consciousness on the other hand cannot be directly inferred from looking at the mass of synaptic connections. Though we know how neurons interact with each other it is not self-evident (yet) how these cascade firings of neurons add up to conscious thought, to feeling to sentience. Thus the human mind is emergent.It was said earlier that if you dissected a human brain you would not be able to see anything you could point to and say “that is consciousness” because it isn’t a thing. It isn’t a substance. It is a property, behaviour. Just because an emergent behaviour can’t be inferred by examining what is doing the behaving, that is no reason to then assume that what is doing the behaving can’t actually be responsible for that behaviour. Langton's Ant is a good example of this If it is impossible to infer such precise behaviours such as the ant’s road building from examining the simple rules it is programmed to follow, why are we so surprised to witness such incredibly complex behaviour, such as the human consciousness, emerge from the comparatively simple mechanics of neuron interaction?It is an argument from incredulity to dismiss the emergent nature of the human mind in favour of the less parsimonious concept of ”soul’ simply because you cant see how that lump of matter could possibly give rise to your concept of you. What would a Neolithic man have made of the Twin Towers? Could he have made the cognitive leap to see that the skyscrapers are an emergent property of his ability to pile rocks up into structures? Or would he more likely think that something other than man had to have had a hand in their existence? To him it would probably be unthinkable that man could have possibly built such structures.

I beg to differ. While you are right in saying consciousness is not a physical entity in it own right, that you can’t hold consciousness in your hand or observe it as a separate thing. However, that does not mean it isn’t a direct manifestation of the physical. The spoken word may seem to be as ephemeral but it is undeniably physical in origin and nature. Our lungs, larynx and mouth conspire to modulate the air. The words we hear are no more or less real than conscious thought. You cant point to a word as it floats through the air and say look a word.The same with music. The tune is emergent from the act of playing a sequence of notes on one or more instruments. The individual notes don’t hold the tune, nether do the instruments but play the right sequence and the tune happens. In Classical there is a technique where you have the violins on the left play a different tune than those on the right. Each side has it’s own distinct melody. But played together a third melody is heard somewhere in the middle. Although this third melody is plainly heard and distinctive it’s not written down, it’s never actually played in and of itself, it is an emergent property of the other melodies when played together. If you change either of the two melodies that are actually being played then the emergent melody evaporates and disappears. The emergent melody is clearly caused by the act of playing the other melodies.There is enough evidence to be pretty sure that the consciousness is rooted in the brain. Brain damage has been seen to cause changes in the level and quality of consciousness in individuals, including and up to Persistent Vegative State (PVS). On top of physical damage there are a multitude of chemicals and drugs out there that change and alter our level of consciousness. If you can change the state of something by altering the state of something else then you have to assume a connection of some kind. If you flick a light switch and a light comes on you don’t assume that the light chose to come on at the very instant you flicked the switch, no, you assume the switch and light are directly connected.As I pointed out in my last post, extremely complicated behaviour can arise from comparatively simple systems in such a way that it is hard to believe that the ”simple’ system is actually capable of the complex behaviour. Emergent behaviour has been shown to exhibit it self in simple networks so why assume that it would be impossible for the vastly more complicated network that is the human brain to develop the extremely complicated emergent behaviour that we call consciousness?Edited by ohnhai, : edited for readability

Indeed, the very point I was coming to.What with your conversation about electrical activity in the brain, my conversation about synapses (part of the same system causing the electrical activity) the fact that the brain is a massive interconnected neural-network, the fact that in large systems unplanned complex behaviours can and do emerge, the fact that damage and drugs affect consciousness, it all adds up to what should be a convincing argument that the consciousness is a property of the brain.What is left to explain? Why feel the need to add an un-provable mystery layer invoking the soul? How is you concept of soul damaged by moving consciousness fully over to the physical? Having a purely physical consciousness shouldn’t invalidate the concept of ”soul’.(and sorry for chipping in, please address your reply to Sidelined.)

OK my mistake. When I said “ . purely physical consciousness . ” I did not actually mean that consciousness was itself, physical. What I meant was that its cause was purely physical. The physical interactions of our neurons cause the behavior we call consciousness to manifest it self.Try and mentally conceive how 500,000,000 little switches (the combined transistor count for the PS3s Cell Prosessor & RSX graphics chip) could possibly achieve this: .You would be hard pressed indeed. However, that does not matter because we accept that they can because these switches are the brains of a computer. That is what it does.While we take for granted that machines like the PS3 can deliver wondrous graphics and immersive, emotional game-play, it can be all to easy to forget that all of it is achieved by a vast array of very small switches changing their states from 1 to 0 and back again.Is ”Solid Snake’ (the character in the picture) and all his friends, enemies and adventures real? I mean physically real? No, they are not. Yet we perceive them as events and things despite being virtual.Now if these characters and events are not physically real does that necessarily carry that their cause is not physically real? That they had some supernatural cause? Of course not. Any one seriously suggesting so would, quite rightly, be laughed clean out of town as crazy.Now the human brain is put at around 100billion neurons. That is a network of 100 billion little switches all interconnected, each passing the signal on if they in turn get a strong enough signal. This interaction on such a massive scale can and does give rise to non-physical behaviors that are hard (or impossible) to infer from simply studying the mechanics of the connections themselves.Because we cant tell exactly how the brain gives rise to consciousness that is no reason to assume that it can not, or does not. Especially when we know that simple systems can give rise to unplanned complex behavior. Langton's ant shows that simple rules can give rise to complex behavior, while the PS3 is proof absolute of the power of a large number of little switches to deliver extra ordinary results. With these two facts applied to the human brain it seems almost inconceivable that consciousness isn’t a highly likely natural outcome. At the very least, we should not exhibit any surprise. As far as I can see, there is absolutely NO reason to invoke the supernatural. Edited by ohnhai, : deleated a stray word to improve readability.Edited by ohnhai, : corrected transistor count for PS3Edited by ohnhai, : fixed Langton's ant link

I think you are still having the misconception of that Consciousness has to be a thing. It is not. It is simply a name given to the state of mind or group of behaviours that we group together and call Consciousness. It doesn’t have a separate existence at all, it is a concept: one ironically facilitated by the very behaviours that it encompasses.What I don’t get is why, despite the points I have made (which I feel highlight that it is highly probable the root cause of ”consciousness’ is the complex, unplanned, emergent behaviour of our brains own neural activities), the fact that you, have admitted a strong correlation between recorded electrical activity in the brain and when the owner of that brain is engaged in conscious thought, the fact that you still hold the brain physically necessary for thought and action, What I don’t get is why you still insist that consciousness isn’t simply a process of the brain?What good solid evidence do you actually have for consciousness being separate from the mechanisms of the brain?

OK once again.

1. Langton's Ant (complex behaviour from simple rules)
2. the PS3's computing power (the ability of a large number of connected switches to produce results seemingly greater than the parts)
3. Damage to the Brain can cause changes in perceptions, thoughts and sensation unto and including PVS (Persistent Vegative State)
4. The ability of certain drugs to greatly alter our perceptions thoughts and sensations (”mind altering drugs’)
5. Map-able correlations of brain activity and thoughts, perceptions, sensations.

All In all fairly convincing I think.A:
Langton’s Ant
C:
How Does a Traumatic Brain Injury Affect Consciousness?
E:
The process of awakening: a PET study of regional brain activity patterns mediating the re-establishment of alertness and consciousness.